Three times in recent decades the United States has approached Arab
countries to join broad coalitions in support of military objectives:
ousting the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s, ousting Iraq
from Kuwait in 1991, and the current war on terrorism. In each case,
efforts to garner Arab support created tensions with the U.S.
commitment to maintain Israelīs "qualitative military edge" against
all potential adversaries. Proposed sales in 2001 of AGM-84
Harpoon "Block II" missiles and MLRS rocket systems to Egypt indicate
that once again there is a danger that a fundamental strategic
principle may be sacrificed for ephemeral diplomatic gains.

The Historic U.S. Commitment to Israelīs Qualitative Edge:
From
Nixon through Reagan

The principle behind the U.S.
commitment to Israelīs qualitative edge
is straightforward: Israel will always be militarily outnumbered with
regard to the artillery, tanks, and combat aircraft that can be
deployed by a coalition of Arab states. While Arab states structure
their ground forces on the basis of standing active service
formations that can be battle-ready with little preparation, Israelīs
army is organized primarily around reserve units, requiring at least
48 hours to reach full strength.

Thus, prior to the Israeli
reserve mobilization, Israel suffers from
acute numerical inferiority in the balance of forces with its
neighbors (Israel faced an 8 to 1 Syrian advantage in armor in
October 1973 on the Golan Heights), which is worsened by the fact
that the Arab world has historically been able to erect multi-state
military coalitions. A military balance in Israelīs favor, therefore,
cannot be achieved by matching the quantities of Arab weaponry,
requiring that Israel maintain its edge on the qualitative front.

As early as the late 1960s, the United States supplied Israel
with
sophisticated weapons systems, years in advance of any Arab country.
Israel received its first F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft in 1969 --
four years before a Phantom sale was even considered for any Arab
state. U.S. F-16s were delivered to Egypt in 1983 -- three years
after the first F-16 delivery to Israel. This de facto commitment to
maintaining Israelīs qualitative edge was first made explicit by the
Reagan administration, and has been reiterated by every U.S.
administration ever since. But the deepening of the declaratory
commitments to Israelīs qualitative edge has been accompanied by a
marked erosion of the policy on both the practical and definitional
levels.

Dilemmas of the 1990s: Qualitative Edge Against
Whom?

Before the policy had a name, for example, the
commitment to Israelīs
qualitative edge was manifest at the level of weapon systems, and the
idea was that this advantage would be maintained indefinitely, rather
than just a brief "head start" on almost identical arms sales to Arab
countries. During the Reagan years, however, the gap in weapon
systems between Israel and Saudi Arabia was largely closed, most
controversially with the 1981 sale of AWACS airborne radar systems
that were qualitatively superior to anything Israel possessed.
Qualitative edge was in danger of becoming an empty slogan.

As
Israelīs advantage in weapon systems was allowed to erode, the
U.S. argued that it was maintaining Israelīs qualitative edge at the
subsystem level -- e.g., Israel would receive the same airframe but
with more sophisticated avionics. The U.S. also recognized that
Israel could contribute to its own edge, particularly in subsystems,
if the U.S. supported Israelīs defense industries by allowing a
portion of U.S. military assistance to be spent in Israel ($475
million was allocated yearly for "off-shore" procurement), rather
than in the U.S. The U.S. would also argue that even if Arab states
possessed the same systems and subsystems as Israel, Israeli
training, tactics, and communication systems gave Israel a military
edge.

Another factor in eroding Israelīs qualitative edge was
the question
over which countries are counted as part of the combined threat
potentially facing Israel: qualitative edge against whom? The issue
of how to treat countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel
was delicate. On one hand, the United States has argued that Egypt is
not a threat to Israel, and the entire military aid program to Egypt
is based on the premise that Egypt is at peace with Israel. On the
other hand, the U.S. tacitly accepted Israelīs point that it cannot
ignore Egyptīs capabilities when calculating the military balance in
the region, because a change of government in Egypt could change
matters. Additionally, the U.S. began in the early 1990s to remove
Gulf Arab states from its calculus of the Arab-Israeli military
balance, focusing on Israelīs qualitative edge "over any likely
combination of Arab foes."

The Challenge of New Arms Sales
to Egypt in 2001

President George W. Bush reaffirmed the
U.S. commitment to Israelīs
qualitative edge after his first meeting with Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon (White House Background Briefing, March 20, 2001). Secretary
of State Colin Powell publicly backed U.S. efforts to "preserve
Israelīs qualitative military edge" in his address to the AIPAC
policy conference on March 19, 2001. Yet in order to achieve backing
for its coalition efforts against terrorism, the Bush administration
has been considering a new round of arms sales to Arab states,
including Egypt.

Specifically, the U.S. is considering the sale
of 53 AGM-84
Harpoon "Block-II" anti-ship cruise missiles to the Egyptian Navy.
According to Boeing, which manufacturers the Harpoon, the "Block-II"
version "improves strike capabilities in congested littoral
environments and adds the ability to attack land-based coastal
targets." This ship-based cruise missile, which has satellite-
guidance, has a range of 100 miles and can deliver a 500-pound
warhead within 30 feet of a target, up to 30 miles inland. In other
words, Israelīs densely-populated and narrow coastal plain,
containing 70 percent of Israelīs population and 80 percent of its
industrial capacity, would become vulnerable to the Egyptian Navy in
the future. Degrading the land-attack capability of this anti-ship
missile might only relieve Israeli concerns for a short period, until
Egypt upgraded the system to its full potential in the future.

Additionally, the U.S. plans to sell Cairo extended-range MLRS
mobile
missile batteries, and kits to assemble 100 M1A1 tanks in Egypt. The
U.S. will be upgrading 35 Egyptian AH-64A Apache attack helicopters
into next-generation AH-64D Apaches. New 199-foot Ambassador-class
patrol craft are under consideration, as well, to be the platform for
the new Egyptian Harpoon missiles. At the end of the 1990s, Egypt
already had 66 combat vessels and 83 patrol craft in its navy, in
comparison with 21 combat vessels and 35 patrol craft in the Israeli
Navy (The Middle East Military Balance, 1999-2000, Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies).

A Pragmatic Approach to Qualitative
Edge

Israel and Egypt signed a treaty of peace in 1979 that
has been
properly characterized as a "cold peace" with little normalization of
relations. Indeed, anti-Israel incitement, with even strong anti-
Semitic overtones, has been rampant in Egyptīs government-controlled
press. Moreover, under Annex III of the treaty, Israel and Egypt
agreed to exchange ambassadors, that were described as "resident
ambassadors" in the accompanying exchange of letters to the treaty.

Egyptīs withdrawal of its resident ambassador, Mohammad
Bassiouny, in
the fall of 2000, in response to the Palestinian intifada, is a
violation of the treaty of peace. Not only has Egypt failed to
provide a "resident ambassador," but this also contradicts the
Egyptiansī obligation "to fulfill in good faith their obligations
under this Treaty, without regard to action or inaction of any other
party" (Article VI). In other words, Egypt is prohibited from linking
its implementation of the treaty to other issues -- like the
Palestinian question.

Israel obviously cannot rely on Egyptian
intentions alone when it
seeks to safeguard its security with respect to its southern
neighbor; it must take into account Egyptian capabilities as well. A
new round of state-of-the-art U.S. arms sales to Egypt can be offset
by new U.S. arms sales to Israel. But this would only create a
spiraling arms race between the two countries. After all, Egypt does
not need such a high level of technological sophistication for
dealing with threats from Libya or Sudan; Egypt has not been invited
by the states of the Arabian peninsula to provide an umbrella for
their security, either.

The U.S. has its own interests in state-
of-the-art weapons sales to
Egypt. In order to limit possibly destabilizing effects of these
weapons transfers, the following points should be placed on the
agenda of U.S.-Israel relations:

A renewed effort needs to be
undertaken to return the Egyptian
resident ambassador to Israel, as called for in the 1979 Treaty of
Peace. Additionally, a new diplomatic initiative needs to be
undertaken to improve Egyptian-Israeli relations.

Destabilizing
U.S. weapons sales of new technologies to Egypt should
be seriously reconsidered and halted, where possible, like the
Harpoon "Block II."

If the U.S. feels compelled to transfer its
latest weaponry to Egypt,
then Israelīs own military research and development need to be
enhanced by increasing the portion of U.S. military aid to Israel
that can be utilized by Israeli industries (off-shore procurement).

Discussing the implications for Israel of U.S. arms sales to
Egypt
should not be a taboo subject. Israelis are confident that Egypt,
under President Mubarak, does not want to return the relations of the
two countries to their pre-1979 status. Still, even the U.S. and
Russia, under Bush and Putin, carefully examine the relative
strengths of their missile forces as they consider new weapons
acquisitions, like National Missile Defense. There is a military
balance -- even after peace agreements are reached. Israelīs
qualitative edge is an inherent component of any strategy to
safeguard Israelīs relations with its neighbors, given the built-in
asymmetries of the Arab-Israeli military balance.
(www.jcpa.org. Đ Copyright 12/16/01)